Tribal Whale Hunt Begins Amid Protests
A Makah whaling family set out Monday in the tribe’s first gray whale hunt of the spring, but the crew returned late in the day without killing a whale. The Coast Guard arrested two protesters.
While tribal leaders insist the seasonal hunt--a centuries-old tradition that resumed after a 70-year absence with the first kill last May--is vital to preserving the Makah identity, anti-whaling activists fear it could open the door to a worldwide renewal of commercial whaling.
The Makah whale hunts stopped in the 1920s as commercial whaling decimated populations. When the gray whale was taken off the endangered species list in 1994, the tribe moved to resume the practice, citing whaling rights granted under their 1855 treaty.
Protest groups, led by Ocean Defense International, have been monitoring the northwest Washington shoreline to protect the whales from the tribal hunters.
The two protesters arrested Monday were accused of violating a 500-yard exclusion zone around the hunt, said Coast Guard Petty Officer Gino Burns.
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